Rudy Ray Moore, most famous for his lead role in the blaxploitation classic Dolemite, died yesterday at the age of 81. Dolemite (trailer) was an odd favorite of mine in my high school days. (via aicn)

Rolling Stone has a new in-depth article about the life of David Foster Wallace (although currently the online version is abridged). Much of the piece comes from an involved interview by David Lipsky in 1996 that ended up not being published, although he also covers the last year of Wallace’s life based on interviews with those close to him. Until you get a copy of the magazine, or a full version appears on the web, RS also has an interview with Lipsky about writing the article that you can read. (via matt b)

Roger Ebert gives one star to a movie that he walked out of after eight minutes, and then justifies his actions in a separate blog post. He hasn’t been this cruel since his reaction to Vincent Gallo’s first version of The Brown Bunny.

In support of Barack Obama – and Early Voting, which starts this Saturday in Nevada – Joanna Newsom will be giving a free concert at UNR on Monday, October 20th. I saw her excellent orchestral show in Grass Valley, CA last year, but she’s great when it’s just her and her harp as well.

There’s been a recent attempt by right-leaning folks to paint ACORN, a voter registration organization that focuses on low-income communities, as responsible for enacting large-scale voter fraud. While this is perhaps an attempt by the right to delegitimize a potential loss on Nov. 4th, it actually raises some interesting statistical questions about large-scale voter registration and registration fraud. Matt Yglesias begins the conversation here.

[I]f you go out and register over a million voters you’ll wind up with a lot of bad forms being submitted. But just as 30,000 is a lot of people and also only a very small fraction of one million people, when you’re talking about registering over a million new voters you’d need orders of magnitude more bad forms to constitute real evidence of a systematic fraud campaign.

The fundamental problem here is that some on the right see it as a good thing that not all eligible Americans are registered to vote. (via advodude)

The New York Times has a somewhat horrifying article about what may be unintentional voter suppression on a wide scale, affecting six swing states including Nevada.

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times… apparently the result of mistakes in the handling of the registrations and voter files as the states tried to comply with a 2002 federal law…

These errors plus overzealous voter fraud laws may lead to a frustrating election day for many.

The Flaming Lips have been working on Christmas on Mars since 2001, making it sort of the Chinese Democracy of the film world (if you were to add 7 more years of production). It’s finally coming out this month, and here is the trailer.

By November 23rd, we may have the nation’s first Black President-elect, and Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy will have been released. What a world.

The music video for A-ha’s “Take on Me,” with the lyrics modified to a narrative description of the events in the video. It’s much funnier than it sounds. (via kottke)

The electoral map of every election in U.S. history. I had no idea that Maine and Vermont voted against F.D.R. all four times he was elected. (via a. sullivan)

The Big Picture this week has some fantastic new photographs from Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s “Earth from Above” series. And you can now use the ‘j’ and ‘k’ keys to scroll to the next and previous photograph, respectively.

AMC is developing a TV series based on Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red Mars. I loved the book when I read it in my high school days, and remember hoping for an adaptation. It’s notable for its realistic take on the colonization of Mars, taking into account hard science, geology, cultural differences betweem the colonizers based on their Earth origins, and even colonial terrorism. (via aicn)

“Sarah Palin” searched on Google 2001. (via flea in the comments)

Homer Simpson runs into a rigged voting machine when trying to vote for Obama. “Must. Tell. President. McCain.” (thx, advoirc)

Google 2001: search the Google index as it existed in its early days. This was back when a search for “crazymonk” brought up my posts on Brian’s Rumors Daily. (via fimoculous)

The Daily Show last night had a segment where they put a group of elderly Jewish people in a room to watch last Friday’s debate and had them scream their thoughts at the TV. Now this is the kind of focus group I enjoy watching!

Time has video clips of the 10 most memorable debate moments. It just goes to show that it’s all about the flub or the one-line zing. (via political wire)

Ecuador is voting on a new constitution this weekend that, among many other things, would give Nature legal rights and allow citizens to sue on its behalf – and the President is threatening to quit if it doesn’t pass. Due to ignorance, I can’t really judge this in the context of Ecuador (although 444 articles seems like way too many to me for a constitution), but it leads me to wonder if there’s a Nature amendment movement in the U.S. – not that it would have any political traction.

I’ve resisted posting something like this, I really have, but this is just too mind-boggling. Compare and contrast: South Carolina vs. Alaska.